


to seek the breast of darkness and be suckled by the night

by TheFandomLesbian



Series: Spencer's Raulson One-Shots [63]
Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Apocalypse, American Horror Story: Coven
Genre: American Horror Story: Coven - Freeform, Angst, Depression, Developing Relationship, F/F, Happy Ending, alternate ending to apocalypse, dark!Misty, foxxay - Freeform, goodeday, raulson - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:14:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24405640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFandomLesbian/pseuds/TheFandomLesbian
Summary: Misty's seven cardinal sins;or how Misty emerged from hell and became Michael's most devastating creation.Her powers have changed. Her empathy has vanished. She feels nothing except when she drinks the life-force of those around her. But war blooms on the horizon, and she knows better than anyone the path through a winding hell.
Relationships: Misty Day/Cordelia Foxx | Cordelia Goode
Series: Spencer's Raulson One-Shots [63]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1214643
Comments: 16
Kudos: 41





	to seek the breast of darkness and be suckled by the night

**Author's Note:**

> I got a prompt for a dark!Misty fic over a year ago, and I finally settled down to write it. This is a new form for me, and I'm pleased with the end result. 
> 
> I borrowed from Apocalypse as I wanted and altered some other details to suit my narrative. I still have not watched the season in full. 
> 
> Title from Simon and Garfunkel's "A Poem on the Underground Wall"
> 
> If you're reading and enjoying my work, please leave a comment! Continuing to produce without encouraging feedback from readers is difficult, so feedback means everything to me. :) <3

I. Greed

The grandiose bedroom Stevie had gifted Misty was larger than her entire cabin. She had never known luxury such as this before in her entire life. _I deserve it. The world is ending._ To think she had emerged from hell in the nick of time so that earth itself was a new hell. 

It couldn’t be hell, really. She was with Stevie. 

Or that was what she would have thought before. 

Now, she wasn’t sure what she thought about anything. 

Sitting over the mahogany desk, she peered down at the sketchbook, at the man before her, the man her fingers had created with charcoal pencils. Misty had never been an artist, not a reader or a writer or a drawer or a painter, but since she came here, she found she couldn’t keep a pen off of the paper. Misty’s art had always been flowers. These days, her flowers struggled, reluctant to accept her energy. They didn’t like her aura now. 

The man on her page gazed back at her, angular features, a long nose. He wasn’t a handsome man. Misty gingerly placed her pencil on the desk, tilting her head as she admired his features. She had seen him before. Where had his cursed gaze found hers before? Why did she stir inside when she looked at him? Not in the way of attraction—Misty knew she would never feel that way for a man—but in some much more animal way. 

Through the open window, a breeze blew in, and the leaves of one of her plants rustled. On both of her desk plants, the leaves had begun to brown. She extended her hand to one. Her fingertips teased the tips of the leaves. They shrank away from her. _Bloom,_ she whispered to them, _bloom, bloom, bloom!_ Cordelia had told her, _Stronger intent!_ but her intent flamed within her, and the plant cringed in terror. 

Power flushed through her. The plant suddenly came to full blossom. “Wow,” she breathed. “It worked.” She glanced at the plant on the other side of her desk. “Huh?” She had revived one succulent to health, but the other had collapsed into blackened death. She touched the rotting leaves of her second succulent. This time, it breathed back to life with ease… and she found the other having crumpled into death. 

Two quick raps shook her from her thoughts. “Come in?” she called. 

Stevie opened the door and stepped inside. “Hey, you.” A grim smile touched Misty’s face, and she found it difficult to maintain. Stevie stepped up behind her and ruffled her hair. “What’s up with your succulents?” 

“I—I don’t know,” Misty admitted quietly. She touched the healthy plant. _What am I doing?_ As she touched it, she drew the plant’s energy into her. She buzzed, vibrating with delight and happiness, as the plant decayed before her eyes. “I’ve never been able to do this before.” As she spoke, she released the energy with a pulse into the other plant, and it bloomed. “I—I don’t know what’s happening. The healing always came from me before… from inside me. Now, I have to take it away to give it back. I’m like a—a witch vampire.” 

A laugh fluttered from Stevie, and it,too, was magical. She massaged Misty’s shoulders, dismissing her concerns in a heartbeat. “Well, the world’s gone to shit, so we might as well have a witch vampire on our side.” She gazed down at Misty’s drawing of the man with the angular face and the odd, haunting eyes, devoid of all emotion and caring, those eyes which continued to suck Misty into them every night when she slept and every day when she drew a new portrait of him. “You’re drawing Michael?” 

Misty blinked. “Is that his name?” This time, Stevie did not laugh at Misty’s expression. Unease rippled between her brows. “He’s the one who saved me, isn’t he?” Misty remembered him, the way he had butchered that teacher so mercilessly, the way he had approached when she placed her arms around Cordelia. “I remember… I don’t like him very much.”

“You shouldn’t,” Stevie advised. “Why are you drawing him?”

“I don’t know. I can’t stop thinking about him.” Misty frowned deeply as she gazed at Michael on the page. “I think he talks to me in my sleep.” 

II. Sloth

“Hello, my daughter.” He extended his arms to her. “Walk with me.” This was a barren land, gray, covered in ash and soot. Misty did not like it here. It smelled like death—not like rot, but like _death itself._ The stink of rot and decomposition had never disturbed Misty because those things did not mean death to her. She could reverse those things. This scent, far more bitter and stale, was the complete absence of life, the complete absence of cells, the complete nothingness. There was nothing to revive here, no indication that anything had ever _been._

She took his arm nonetheless. “I think I’m actually quite a bit older than you, you know.” She didn’t know why she said that. 

He grinned. “We are all sons and daughters. I like to think of you as my creation. I take it you’ve discovered your new power by now?”

“Yeah. Can’t say I’m too happy with it.” He was silent. He let her speak… No one else ever seemed to listen to her these days. If he would listen, she would talk. She didn’t like him, but she didn’t need to like someone to vent to him. “Can’t say I’m too happy with anything, though, anymore.” 

“Is that so?” Misty nodded. She walked beside him. Her bare feet sank into this ash. The chemicals from the earth scorched the soles of her feet. The radiation marred her skin, but the sting was distant, like a memory she couldn’t quite bring to the surface. He remained unchanged. “So the things that once brought you joy have no hold on you anymore?” 

She shrugged. “I guess you could say that. I used to love Stevie, her music… It doesn’t make me happy anymore. I don’t feel any less alone with her around than I did when I was really alone.” She twirled a lock of hair around her finger. The radiation melted the flesh from her digit. It burned into her singed hair. She paid it no mind and continued to stride through the apocalypse. “I used to make bouquets for people. All the flowers, I knew their meanings, I could send messages through them. I would make them bloom by my own hand. Make them beautiful. Each one was a part of me, so I knew, when I gave someone a bouquet, I was giving them something of myself.” 

She inhaled deeply. The soot from this arid land smothered her lungs. Her feet were but bones now, the muscle and sinew seared from them. “I don’t laugh when I see a butterfly anymore. Yesterday, I walked by one on the street—dead, baked in the sun. I didn’t even try to save it. It’s like… It’s like everything that ever gave me joy is gone. It’s like my—my _ability_ to even _feel_ anything, anything at all—that’s gone, that feeling. Not just happiness, but fear, and sorrow, and excitement, it’s all meaningless to me now.”

He made eye contact with her, pausing for a moment as he faced her. “That is how I have lived every day of my life.” 

“I’m sorry.” As much as Misty didn’t like him, as much as she loathed him as her eyes made contact with his while her face gradually melted off of her maxilla, she pitied him. No one deserved to live in this new numbness she had known since she awoke. “There is one thing, though.” 

He brightened—happiness? No, surprise—when she spoke. “What’s that?” 

“Cordelia,” Misty said slowly. “My heart…” As she spoke these words, the flesh liquefied from her ribcage and revealed the thrashing organ behind her ribs. “My heart still beats faster when she calls me, when I hear her voice. She makes me happy again, when I can be with her, if only for a little while.”

Something turned in his expression. Displeasure? Misty wasn’t sure. “Is that so?”

III. Gluttony

Darkness enshrouded the streets as Misty trotted through a back alley, the heels of her boots clicking the ground. She’d gotten turned around when she had left the theater, and now she couldn’t see the limousine where it had been parked, waiting to take her home. She’d lost her phone somewhere along the line—she thought she had left it at home. Carrying a phone was new for her, and she forgot it often, even as much as Stevie and Cordelia impressed upon her the need to keep it with her at all times. 

As evening drew over her, she gazed up at the sky. _Stevie is going to worry._ And once Stevie worried, she would call Cordelia, and Cordelia would have a _conniption_ when she found out. Misty hurried onward down the alley as the lamplights grew brighter overhead, flicking on when nightfall consumed the area. 

She didn’t want to be lost on the streets of Los Angeles alone after dark, but with each passing minute, it looked like she had less of a choice. 

Rounding a corner, she spotted two silhouettes at the end of the dimly lit alley, their black figures against a slightly lighter background. A man and a woman together, a few feet apart. “Hey, there, darling,” whistled the woman as she strutted beside him. “Three hundred for the night?” _That’s not very safe._ It had never been _safe_ to be a prostitute, but these days, with the state of the world, Misty couldn’t imagine trying to work the streets. 

The man observed her from a distance. “You sure you wanna be doing this, the way the world is today?”

“A woman’s gotta live, don’t she?” 

He chuckled, a dark and deviant thing. All of the hair on the back of Misty’s neck stood up. “No,” he said, louder. “She don’t.” He whipped a long blade from his back pocket. It glinted in the lamplight overhead. He lunged for her, taking her by the strap of her dress, and dragged her closer to him. His voice echoed down the alley though it dropped to the whisper as he choked a hand around her throat. “If you scream, I’ll stab you and leave you bleeding out in that dumpster where you belong.” She whimpered. “Be quiet, and it will all be over soon.” He reached up her skirt. In one fluid motion, he tore off her panties, and he reached to unzip his pants. 

Misty watched, mystified for a moment, almost confused—though, logically, she knew what was happening when he pushed the woman against the wall and held his hand over her mouth to keep her cries muffled, she froze. She couldn’t _act._ She knew she _should_ do something, _should_ go get help, _should_ scream, _should_ approach them… but her heart thundered in her chest and anchored her feet to the ground. 

“Thanks, doll.” He removed his hand from the woman’s mouth. Then, he took her by the hair, dragged her head back, and slit her throat from ear to ear. 

The soul cried out to Misty when it left her body, and this shook Misty from her reverie. “Hey!” _Did I just do that?_ The voice seemed to come from outside of her. “Hey, you! Stop!” She lifted her head and approached the man, whose bloody knife pointed toward her. Blood covered his hands, his face, his shirt. 

He didn’t attempt to flee. “You’re one stupid bitch, aren’t you?”

“You think so?”

“I think so.”

Misty stopped beside the still body of the rape victim, her carotid artery still pulsing remnants of her lifeblood across the pavement. Misty stepped in the blood. She halted in the puddle. “You should come a little closer and find out.”

He regarded her, an odd light in his eyes. “Suicidal cunt.” He held up his knife, coming straight for her.

Her magic grasped him by the throat, a vice. A thin choking sound whistled from him. “What’s it like now?” Misty whispered. Excitement, energy, pulsed through her. She felt so little these days. This, this exhilaration? She drank from it like a desert wanderer from an oasis. “How powerful do you feel now?” His knife dropped from his hand, but her telekinesis caught it. She dropped his pants with ease. “Why don’t I show you how it feels to put something where it doesn’t belong?”

He howled in anguish. The knife buried up to the hilt in his anus. “Doesn’t feel so nice, does it?” Misty asked, her voice a dark purr. “You had to learn too late.” She stepped closer to him. As his breath fanned across her face, she inhaled. She drew the life force out of him. His energy, his soul, his glucose, it drank from him and poured into Misty’s body. She shivered, but she continued to drain him. Twitching with excess, the world became brighter, more hazy. The man shriveled and wrinkled; even the life which had given his body structure came into her. 

He dissipated. First flesh melting into muscle melting into sinew melting into bone, and then the skeleton flushed through the air. Misty’s form trembled. Oh, she was _high!_ She cackled. Her voice echoed down the street. _But it isn’t mine to keep._ Turning on her heel, she picked up the dead woman from the street and brushed the glass from her body. The wound knitted shut. Misty gazed into her unseeing eyes and exhaled. 

The lifeforce she had so willingly accepted overflowed from her into this woman. The woman drank in a deep breath. Misty pushed, _pushed,_ ** _pushed,_** until emptiness throbbed inside of her. Before her, the woman sniffled and wept. “Hey, hey, hey…” Misty found it difficult to stand upright. She placed one hand on the wall to steady herself in her dizziness. She kept the other hand on the woman. “It’s alright. You’re alright. You’re safe.” She wiped away the woman’s tears. “Hey, look here.” She opened up her wallet and took out a one hundred dollar bill. “Forget my face. Take care of yourself.”

One hundred dollars wouldn’t go far, not in the old world, not in the new world. But as the woman nodded hurriedly and dashed away, Misty felt both a little lighter and a little darker at the same time. 

IV. Lust

“Miss Cordelia?” 

“Yes, Misty, what’s the matter?”

“Are you too busy to talk right now?”

“No, I’m never too busy to talk to you. You can call me anytime, you know. I’ll always answer. What’s up? You sound upset.”

“I did something very bad. Except… I don’t think it was that bad. I don’t know if it was really that bad. It was really bad. I don’t feel bad about it. I don’t feel guilty. I don’t feel sad. I don’t feel happy. I don’t feel very much anymore.”

“Slow down, sweetheart, I can’t understand you. You’re breathing too fast. Is Stevie with you? Are you safe?”

“Yes, yes, I’m safe, I’m home—she found me, I was lost but she found me, my clothes are being washed now, she said they’ll get the blood off and nobody will ever know.”

“The blood? Misty, what—what happened exactly?”

“I don’t know. I do know, I guess, I just don’t want to tell you. I’m different now, I’m changing, I don’t understand how or why. My magic is different. I can’t give life to things anymore. It doesn’t come from me anymore. I have to take it away from something else first. The plants, in my rooms, I make them take turns—I can’t have them both alive at the same time, so one gets to live one day and the other the next day. They’re both the plants you gave me, I can’t choose between them. I have to make it fair. But it isn’t fair, it’s not fair, I’m different now. The life always came from _me,_ you know, from inside _me,_ I don’t understand why it doesn’t anymore.” 

“The life still comes from inside you, Misty.”

“You know your voice is like a balm to me, Miss Cordelia?”

“It’s sweet of you to say that. But I’m telling the truth. You told me you have a lot of healing to do. That’s why you’re with Stevie. That’s why you’re not with us. You need to recover, to get your own footing. You’ll recover.” 

“I ain’t being sweet. I mean it. Do you really think that? ‘Cause I’ve tried. I’ve tried everything the old way. Even when I don’t have a target exactly, I pull from anything around me, even the grass. I can’t put life into nothing without sucking it out of something else. It’s sick. But it makes me feel so—so raw, and high, and _intoxicated,_ it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before.” 

“Are you using drugs?”

“What? No, of course not. You know I wouldn’t do anything like that. But this feeling. I haven’t felt anything in so long. I’ve been numb ever since I woke up in your arms. The only time I feel anything is when I hear your voice or see your face. You make me feel whole again. And this feeling I get when I take the life away from something, when I kill something, it’s unlike anything else.” 

“I’m worried about you.”

“I know.”

“When this is all over, I’ll get you some help. I promise.”

“Will we be together then?”

“Yes, we will.”

“I know I said I needed to heal, but I’m starting to think it was a mistake to think I could do it without you. I’m starting to think maybe I ought not be doing anything if I’m not with you—or at least that things don’t seem worth doing if I’m not with you.” 

“Are you trying to tell me something, Misty?”

“I am, if you want to hear it.”

“I do.”

“I’m in love with you.” 

“You know I feel the same.”

“I was hoping so, yeah.”

“Misty, I know you want to be with us right now. But I think I feel better knowing you’re safe with Stevie.”

“I understand. But when this is over, we’ll be together?”

“I promise. And I’ll figure out what’s going on with your magic, and we’ll get you some help, and you won’t have to worry about killing things or losing yourself ever again.”

“That’s the thing, though, Miss Cordelia… I don’t worry about it, killing things. I—I actually look forward to the next time I get to do it. It excites me. That’s scary, isn’t it?”

“I love you, Misty. Be safe.”

“I never did tell you about that awful thing I did.”

“Do you want me to know?” 

“No. No, I don’t. I love you, too, Miss Cordelia. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” 

V. Envy

Age had weathered the man, but Misty recognized him by his curly hair where she peeked out from the corner of the wall. The shouting had drawn her out of her bedroom, and now, she waited, watching with her head tilted as he towered over Stevie in her foyer. He’d caught her by surprise; she wore her slippers and her silky robe.

The man thrust a finger at Stevie’s chest. “We had a deal, Stevie! You were going to talk to _Mick!_ What happened to that? You were supposed to have my back!” 

“The _apocalypse_ happened, in case you missed it,” Stevie replied, a stark deadpan as she eased herself away from him. “There isn’t going to be a tour. I’m not selling myself out for principle.”

“You’re not selling yourself out for principle? Where was that when I told Mick and John that they took both of us or neither of us? When I told them Buckingham-Nicks is a bonded pair, that we won’t go without each other?”

“Was the apocalypse happening then?” Lindsey’s jaw tightened. “I rest my case.”

“This isn’t over, Stevie!”

“Like hell, it isn’t over! Have you seen the state of the world? Either we’re all going to die in nuclear fallout, or by the time the war is over, we’re going to be too old to give a shit about touring or about anything else for that matter.”

“ _I_ give a shit! I give a shit about my career, about my family.” Stevie turned her back to him. Lindsey grabbed her by the shoulder and snatched on her arm. “Don’t turn your back on me, you old—”

Misty caught him by the throat. _I don’t remember walking across the room._ She hadn’t done it; she hadn’t lifted a finger or a toe, but now, she stood inches away from him, his throat pinched by her magic. He choked a thin sound. “You’re gonna regret that.” Misty gazed into his blue eyes. The petechiae flared in response to the choking. Mouth open, Misty sucked in a deep breath, and as she did, he withered. 

Before her, Lindsey Buckingham melted, wrinkling like a raisin in the sun. The color bled from his skin. He melted into gray. His heart stopped, his breathing moments after, and Misty kept _drinking,_ kept _drinking_ his essence. She wanted him to _disappear_ like the other man had disappeared; she wanted him _gone_ — 

“Misty, what the fuck? Stop it!” Stevie grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her away. Lindsey collapsed into a bony, dehydrated, lifeless heap upon the floor. “What do you think you’re doing?”

She set her jaw. “I wasn’t done draining him.” Oh, but it felt _good_ to have his life inside of her. Everything was so bright and clear. She adored it, this energy, what she had drunk from him. 

“You weren’t done _draining_ him? You’re a witch, not a vampire!” Stevie’s voice was shrill with distress. “You have to bring him back.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, _no?_ ”

Misty grated out, “He was going to hit you. I had to stop him.”

Stevie stared up at her. “He was going to _hit me?_ I’ve been hit many times in my life, and I’ve never needed a bodyguard to step up and suck the life out of somebody for it.” She put her hands on her hips. “Come on, just bring him back. We’ll wipe his memory and send him on his way.” Misty shook her head, obstinate. She wouldn’t revive someone who raised a hand against Stevie. “He has a family. People are going to come looking for him.”

The new life boiled inside of Misty. It thrilled her to her soul, to her bones. “Then we should get rid of the evidence.” 

Stevie looked at his body and sighed deeply. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Fine. I know where we can dig a hole out back.” 

Misty picked him up with ease. He was light now. She had taken all of the heaviness from him. She followed Stevie out of the house. The patio was dimly lit. “Do you really think the world is going to end?” Misty asked. Stevie summoned a shovel and plunged it into the earth. “Cordelia says she can stop it.” 

The cool night air whistled with crickets. “I don’t know what I think.”

“You don’t seem very shocked, or torn up, that I killed him.”

“I was friends with Fiona most of my life.” Stevie shrugged. “Will you tell Cordelia?”

“Do you think I should?” 

“Yes. Like the other one.” 

Placing the sad sack of bones on the ground, Misty took the shovel from her. It seemed unfair for Stevie to dig the hole. After all, Misty had killed the man. “I didn’t tell her about the other one,” she confessed quietly. “I couldn’t. I just told her I did something really bad, and—and when this is over, I’ll need her help to fix it.” She licked her lips. The air was sticky and humid. 

Stevie tilted her head. “Why didn’t you tell her?” 

Sucking in her cheek, Misty considered. Then, she said, “Cordelia is the only one who can make me feel anything anymore. I can’t jeopardize my—my relationship with her, because of this.” She dug the hole deeper. _Six feet. Maybe eight._ That was a lot of dirt to move. No, she just needed enough to cover his body suitably, and then she would call Cordelia and tell her to prepare a ruse to get a bunch of cops off of Stevie’s ass. It was the apocalypse. One missing man, even a celebrity, couldn’t mean much these days. “I can’t make her think different about me. But being hers and doing this—the killing—those feelings are the only things that set this world apart from hell.” She lowered her head. “At least in hell, I was safe.” She rolled the wizened corpse over into the hole in the earth and began to move the soil back on top of him, returning him to the dust from whence he had come. 

VI. Pride

The sirens pierced the air. 

Misty ran. She ran away from her desk with the two plants, one wilted and one alive. She ran away from her bed. She ran away from her shawls. She ran away from her sketchbook open to a page with a portrait of an ugly, pale, demonic man on the front page. She ran out of her bedroom, up the hallway, to the staircase. “Stevie?” 

The shriek to her own voice startled her. She hadn’t expected to scream. 

“Misty! Hurry!” At the base of the stairs, Stevie held Lily under her arm. The dog wriggled and writhed in fear at the wailing of the sirens. In her other hand, she clutched the keys to the bomb shelter. Misty’s bare feet slapped the wooden stairs. Stevie waited for her at the base of the stairs. “Let’s go.”

Stevie took her by the arm and dragged her from the house, leaving all of the doors ajar. Misty dropped to her knees before the hole to the bomb shelter. Stevie dropped her the keys, and she fumbled with them to unlock the grate. The cover was immense. She dragged it off to the side. “Go, go—” Stevie dropped through the hole and fumbled down the ladder, careful not to drop Lily, who yapped in distress. Misty ducked after her and hauled the cover back over the grate. It locked into place, casting them into darkness. 

The sensors detected their motions. The lights flicked on, illuminating the ladder. Stevie dropped to the bottom of the shelter. Misty followed suit, and they headed to the deepest, farthest corner of the shelter, with two cots side by side. Stevie clutched her chest as she sat down on the end of one caught. “Do you think we’re safe down here?” Misty asked, looking up at the fluorescent lighting. It flickered. Would the generator fail them? Would it cast them into the darkness and leave them helpless? 

Stevie clutched at her chest. “I don’t—know—”

“Are you alright—” 

The sirens bloomed like sunflowers. Heat flared. The earth pulsed and shivered. Stevie fell to the ground. Misty ducked beside her, pressing them both into the corner and covering their bodies with a blanket from one of the cots. Light, light, light from all angles—she pinched her eyes tightly closed, the heat, the heat was unbearable, they would smother—glass shattered as jars in the storage fell from the shelves—the noise, it was deafening, she would never hear anything else ever again—

Then, silence. The deadest silence Misty had ever experienced in real life. Just as dead as her dreamscape. 

“Stevie!” She pushed herself upright. Stevie’s body slumped off of her. “Stevie?” She lay, warm but still, and did not move. Misty grappled with her wrist. There was no pulse. “Stevie, I—”

The silence consumed her. She did not weep. Even this did not ignite emotion within her. Her eyes flicked down to Lily, growling at her. The dog ripped herself from Stevie’s arms and dashed away from Misty. “I’m really sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t ever want to have to do this.” Misty bent over, picking up the tiny dog. “I know what I gotta do,” she whispered to Lily’s hairless ear. “I’m gonna make it right. And then I’ll come right back and fix you up. I will. I promise. I’m so, so sorry.” 

It was unfair, this fight. For the first time, Misty robbed the life of something innocent and powerless. She gazed into those brown eyes, and she drank. She measured herself—she did not drink until Lily disappeared. She drank until the body began to wither, and then she placed her on her own cot, tucking her into the bed and closing her eyes. 

With gentle hands, Misty lifted Stevie onto the other cot and breathed the life back into her. Her chest rose and fell evenly, but she would rest, first, before she would awaken. 

That was good. Misty didn’t want to be confronted.

Taking a piece of paper and a pen, Misty chewed the end of the pen, trying to think of something she could say to explain herself. Nothing sounded right. What could she say? It was the end of the world, and yet she felt nothing. But then her sacrifice would not be a major one, for she would feel as little in death as she did in this life. Would that consolation ease her loss for Stevie? She had no way of knowing. 

_Dear Stevie,_

_Sorry about Lily. I had to do it to fix you. I’m going to make things right. You’ll know it’s done when she comes back. I don’t think you’ll see me again. I know what I have to do. Stay safe._

_Love,_

_Misty Day_

VII. Wrath

A string of bodies littered the ground as Misty followed the sound of voices through the halls of Outpost Three. She silently ascended the spiral staircase. “How did you think this would end?” Michael’s voice—she recognized it from the dreams in which they had walked together. “Prophecy is inevitable. I was always going to win… Miss Supreme.” 

Cordelia’s back was toward her. Misty climbed the stairs. Her dress flowed out behind her. “Not on your own. You’ve been led by the hand, coddled, the entire way. By your father, the warlocks.” Her voice curdled as she spoke, curling with hatred, with indignation. “I look at you, and I don’t see a man.” Misty’s heart blossomed at the sight of her, at the sweet sound of her voice—even now, even under these circumstances, Cordelia and Cordelia alone could bring her joy. “I see a sad, scared little boy so pathetic he couldn’t even kill me with a thousand nuclear bombs.” 

“But I never expected to.” Michael’s voice was smooth as velvet. Misty’s blood boiled. “Like a cockroach, I knew you’d survive the nuclear fallout. I wanted you to.” Misty’s shadow landed on the wall. “And now I’m going to have the satisfaction of watching you die at the hands of the one you love the most… At the hands of our visitor.” 

Misty rounded the corner. Cordelia, for the first time, noticed her. “Misty!” Her eyes brightened, the candlelight sparkling in them. They sheened with tears, her face with sweat. Blood coated her hands. “I thought I was the last one.” Her voice shivered. 

Michael smiled. He extended a hand. “Oh, believe me… You are.” He beckoned Misty with all four fingers, summoning her toward him. “Come here, my daughter—my creation.” 

A shadow crossed Cordelia’s face. “Misty—”

_Trust me,_ Misty willed, but she couldn’t speak it aloud. She swept Cordelia once with her gaze. _I want her to be the last thing I see._ Misty’s bare feet caressed the floor as she approached Michael. The radiation had not touched her, courtesy of her magic, when she had crossed the earth from Stevie’s bomb shelter to this place. “I see I’m a little late to the party.” She glanced over her shoulder, looking at the shadows on the wall, and she waited until her shadow blotted out Cordelia’s—until she knew, with all certainty, that she blocked any shot Michael had at her. “Did you have too much fun without me?”

“I saved you this one to feast upon. I thought you would enjoy her the most.” He smiled. Misty smiled back. Smiling was easy; she had learned to feign these things in the days since he brought her out of safety and into this living hell. “My first creation, my finest—I think it is fitting for you to be my right hand. So I have saved a fruitful harvest for you. When you sap her, you will be much stronger for it.” _Oh, I’ll be stronger when I sap someone, that’s for sure._ Misty held his gaze. “There’s still much joy to be had, my dear.”

Misty tilted her head. _I wish I could see Cordelia._ She didn’t dare look back. “You remember what I told you about joy?”

“I take it your opinion has changed now.”

“It has.” At these two words, Misty offered her hand to him, palm up, and he placed his hand in hers. Blood smeared against her skin. _Whose?_ she wondered. Which one of the witches had died to paint her skin crimson now? “Now I can think of no greater pleasure than draining what was once the most powerful being in the universe.” She gripped his hand a little tighter. 

Cordelia’s voice cracked. “Misty, please.” 

“You know what to do, Misty,” Michael purred to her.

Misty’s eyes dropped down to where their hands joined together. “Your right hand?” she asked again. “You said that’s where I’ll be.”

“Yes.”

“But not your equal.” His brow furrowed. “Because Satan has one son. But my sisters are legion, motherfucker.” 

His whole body stiffened, but he didn’t have the chance to escape or to react as Misty sucked from him, inhaling and dragging his essence along with the breath entering her lungs. She throbbed, she pulsed, she shivered. Her power milked him like a snake’s venom. One hand whipped out. She clutched him by the throat. 

White light crackled around the edges of her vision. She was but a vessel, and not a large enough one to hold everything Michael had become. He had given her this power. He had not imagined how she would use it to drain him of his. She, his first and finest creation, attacked the hand which had given her this gift, this curse. Like the others, petechiae flashed in the whites of his eyes.

He struggled. Thin noises escaped from him. She tightened her vice grip on his throat. Bright light poured from the cracks in her skin, around her fingernails, around her eyes, from her ears; she drank in more magic than one mortal could ever dream of holding. The high left, and in its place was _agony._

A flame had dropped into the gasoline inside of her. She was _burning_ in this self-inflicted misery. Michael crumpled. In spite of the efforts the witches had hurled at him, he was still mortal. She drank and drank and drank from his magic. The breath stopped attempting to struggle past her hand. The pulse point in his neck ceased its fight. She persevered. She could leave no remnant of this man if she hoped to ensure safety for herself, for Cordelia, for the other witches, for Stevie, for Lily. 

Her body melted from the inside out. The fierce heat sought exit points, her eyes, her nose, the creases of her knuckles, her mouth, and it was not enough. 

Cordelia’s voice dimly registered behind her. “Misty! Stop! You’ll destroy yourself!” _That’s exactly what I intend to do._ She could undo all of this. She could return Mother Earth to her intended state—at enormous cost to herself. 

Excruciating steps. She dragged Michael along by the throat. He was so small, now, dead and unfeeling, yet his corpse refused to crumble. “Get the door—” Her own voice echoed in her ears as she spoke, the sound of an ocean, and Cordelia obeyed, ripping the door off of its hinges and exposing Outpost Three to all of the radiation out there. 

Step. His fingers dissipated. Her heart thundered. Step. His hands, next, and her lungs. Step. She clutched merely a sad, shriveled face. Step. She could see no more as the last of his magic entered her body. The white light gushed from her eyes. Her limbs had no more sensation except the incineration of the magic inside of them where it was not made to fit. 

She collapsed upon the sooty earth. 

Another explosion shook the earth. 

It was the first explosion in this war intended to create, not to destroy—intended to rebuild instead of devastate, to revive instead of conquer. And the human bomb lay curled in the fetal position as the evil power which had entered her emerged something so much more pure and bright and honest and kind than the man who had wielded it moments ago. Michael thought he had created her, but he had created nothing but his own enemy, his own greatest weakness, for the magic inside of Misty could never have served someone so dark without perverting itself in the process. 

“Misty!” Cordelia shrieked. The sun glowed overhead, the clouds floating by in holy puffs of white. Cordelia dropped to her knees. “Misty, Misty, wake up!” Misty could scarcely see for the light. Her eyelids fluttered. She fought to hold them open. Cordelia rolled her onto her back, and her hands coasted across the soft clover. 

The poisonous, ravaged earth had sprouted a field of wildflowers. Misty had restored it.

She had robbed Michael of his power and granted it back to the earth, returning it to a state before he had ever touched it. 

“Cordelia!” Myrtle. “Cordelia!” Madison. “Cordelia!” Other voices, more witches Misty had never known, had never met; these voices clustered around and poured from the building of the Outpost. “You did it! You stopped him! What happened?” _They’re alive. It worked._ And somewhere in the world, Stevie was holding Lily, who was very much alive. Somewhere, Queenie and Zoe unearthed themselves, fresh and alive. Somewhere, the forest stood as tall and as marvelous as they had before the bombs had ever tarnished them. 

“No, not me—Misty, wake up—Misty—” Cordelia’s voice echoed. Hazy eyes refused to focus on the woman hovering over her in the grass. _I can still smell her… and the wildflowers._ She could vaguely make out the outline of Cordelia’s blonde hair. Cordelia leaned over her, eye to eye. _Her eyes are so beautiful._ Misty wanted to speak these words, but her broken shell of a body refused to obey. She could not move her lips, not her hand, nothing. “Misty, the life—the life comes from inside you, I told you—” Her voice cracked. “I promised you we’d be together.” 

Joy flushed through Misty, though Cordelia’s tears sprinkled her cheeks. She smiled. It was genuine this time. “Misty, _please,_ ” Cordelia begged. “I can’t lose you again. I’ve only just got you back—” _I want you to be the last thing I see._ Misty knew what awaited her in hell, but she hoped she had earned a ticket into heaven. A tender kiss pressed to her lips. “I love you. I promised—” Her breath hitched in her throat. “I promised I would be with you, so you have to wake up, because I’m here—” 

Another blurred form hovered just beyond, topped with a smear of red. “Cordelia, dear—” Myrtle’s hand settled on Cordelia’s shoulder, trying to pull her away. 

Cordelia howled a protest. “ _No!_ Don’t take me away from her, _no—_ ” Her pathetic sob sliced through the air like shears. _I don’t want to leave her like this._ Misty’s eyes glazed over. _I don’t think I have a choice._

Two figures appeared in the field just beyond the cluster of witches where they waited for their Supreme to rise. The tall one led; the short one followed. “I see you all have had some fun.” The voice was familiar to Misty. It sent a shiver down her spine, though she lacked the strength to open her eyes. “I thought I would send you some aid when I relinquished this assistant from my realm into yours.”

Someone behind Cordelia echoed, “Marie Laveau?” 

He chuckled. “No, child. Satan and his army saw that move coming a mile away.” He bowed down beside Misty. 

“Don’t touch her!” Cordelia tried to collect Misty, tried to drag her away from the touch of the tall man who had breached the veil between worlds to walk this earth. “What are you doing to her?” 

“Relax, Supreme. I gave the witch her powers eons ago when I first breathed magic into all of you…” Papa Legba caressed Misty’s shoulder. She sucked in a deep breath. The world erupted into clarity. Her eyes fluttered. Her heart pittered. Her fingers and toes flexed in the magical dirt and enjoyed the caress of the worms and the leaves of clover. He guided her upright. “I thought it fitting to help you now. Satan thought he had perverted one of mine. But he should have known better.” 

Misty lifted her gaze to Papa Legba. His red eyes branded her soul… but when she looked into them, she trembled with fear. _Fear._ She _felt something._ “You changed me,” she whispered, the realization, and Cordelia put her arms around her waist and dragged her back, closer into her embrace. “You made my powers different.”

A smile cracked upon his lips. “I did.” He studied her. “We have come to collect what’s ours. The war is over and the bargain is done.” 

Cordelia clutched Misty tighter. “No—” Her voice quivered. “You can’t take her—She just saved all of us, the whole world—She deserves to stay.” 

Papa Legba tilted his head. “I am not moved by the emotions of humans, witch or otherwise.” Tears coursed down Cordelia’s cheeks. She shook her head in resistance; she would not release Misty without a fight. _I should go with him. I should tell her to let me go._ Misty didn’t want anyone else to be hurt for her or by her. But something wavered upon Papa Legba’s face. “However, I suppose—I suppose the deal you made was with Michael, and since he has fallen, it is now void.” He glanced back at Nan, behind him. “What do you think?” 

She smirked at Misty. “I’ll see you the next time Charon brings you down and not until then.” 

He surveyed them for a moment. “But I have taken back what I gave to you.” Misty blinked in surprise. “I think you’ll find you’re much more comfortable with your magic the way it was before the war. Witches and vampirism do not mix.” 

Oh, Misty was _light._ “I am.” Her voice was a croak, still hoarse from the endeavor. “Thank you.” Cordelia squeezed her hand. Misty squeezed back. “Nan, you could—you could stay…” 

“Nah.” She grinned. “Papa says I’m one of his favorites.” 

Papa Legba scanned all of them. “This is not the end. We will all meet again, eventually.” He turned on his heel, and he escorted Nan away, until they both vanished from view. 

Cordelia’s hands enveloped Misty’s face. Misty leaned into her embrace. “I was so scared—” Cordelia's voice was a whisper, a whimper, and she had no shame in showing it in front of the witches who watched just beyond. She brushed Misty’s hair out of her eyes. Leaves and flowers tangled in it from the field they stood in. “I thought he had turned you, and then—then I realized what you were going to do—” Her breath hitched into a sob. “I thought I would watch you die again.” 

Misty leaned forward. Their foreheads bumped. Mirth burst through her every cell, so much purer and lighter than the intense high she had garnered from draining life from living bodies. “I’m sorry I scared you.” She cupped Cordelia’s cheek in her palm. “Let me make it up to you?” 

Leaning forward, Misty kissed Cordelia, and they entwined in one another, the California sunlight illuminating their love for all to see. 


End file.
